I was given this quote by two of my wonderful teachers, Rick Steadry and Walter Urie. I have to remind myself of this all the time.
In every other art medium the artist makes something out of nothing. The painter with his blank canvas and the sculptor with her mound of clay, each creating an image from their own vision. Photography is the only medium in which we search everything to find the one thing we want to show our viewer. The face of a child from the crowd of a wedding party, or the tear of a mother in the middle of calamity. As photographers we take from the world to show to the world what we see. It's our job to show you something you didn't see before. Seriously, just think about that.
A little inspiration for all of us!
It involves looking at everything one wants to describe
long enough, and attentively enough, to find in it some
aspect that no one else has yet seen or expressed.
Everything contains some element of the unexplored
because we are accustomed to using our eyes only with
the memory of what other people before us have thought
about the object we are looking at. The least thing has a bit
of the unknown in it. Let us find this. In order to describe
a fire burning or a tree in a field, let us stand in front of
that fire and that tree until they no longer look to us like
any other fire or any other tree
Kelley,
ReplyDeletegreat post great idea. I have always thought of photography asmaking an ordinary moment extra-ordinary and in doing so making that moment last forever. Wonderful;food for thought...
slainte,
Noel
I like that, I'm with you!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Noel!
Hi Kelley.
ReplyDeleteAnother very thought provoking post.
Interesting what you say about as Photographers we take from the world to show the world what we see. Thinking about it that is THE reason I love photography so much ie how it allows us to show what we see but in our own unique way and how 2 people photographing the same thing will produce two very different images with very different feelings.
Until now, as strange as it may seem I'd not really given it that much thought so thank you.
All the best to you,
Glyn
Exactly! That's wonderful, exactly!
ReplyDeleteHi Kelley, in my day job I'm exposed to the Japanese word Kaizen ("change for better") from a completely point of view - quality management. However I completely agree with sentiment in your posting and Noel's / Glyn's comments. Even in the ordinary there is extraordinary -maybe not to everyone else but to you. A bit of a beauty in the eye of the beholder type thing. Although we may all be looking at the same thing we don't all 'see' the same thing.
ReplyDeleteYour post reminds me of something I heard Ken Scott (a UK photographer I had the pleasure of hearing talk at a seminar) talked about a Zen like approach to photography. He stated that when taking a photograph he's started to question and ask himself what it is that he see's that has made him want to capture image. Is it the lighting, the lines, the angles etc, whatever it is doesn't matter but by questioning in such a manner every time he goes for his camera, he's more able to impart something from him into that photograph that gives it that something extra.
(See his blog posting www.touchingthelight.co.uk/words/archives/117 for more info)
I guess for me photography has always been a medium for communicating a moment that I saw or felt 'something'. It gives me the artistic expression that I have in my minds eye which I can never otherwise release given that I was never a good artist in the traditional way drawing or painting.
Regards,
David
David,
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for your comments. I find it so wonderful that this medium of photography brings us all so much. I will certainly look at Ken's post.
Thanks again,
Kelley